Let a Thousand Orgasms Bloom! A review of The Case of the Female Orgasm, by Elisabeth A. Lloyd

In The Case of the Female Orgasm, Elisabeth A. Lloyd has taken a really terrific topic and written a really terrible book. I say this with sincere and manifold regret, first because female orgasms pose fascinating and important questions, that warrant serious attention from evolutionary biologists. Second, I particularly would have loved to find a worthwhile book on this matter, not least because I am working on my own book-length treatment of it and other " womanly mysteries. " Thus, for all the interest (scientific no less than personal as well as prurient) attaching to female orgasm, there are many other dimensions of womanhood that also remain to be explained in convincing evolutionary terms: Why is ovulation concealed? Why is it so often synchronized? Why does menopause occur? Ditto for menstruation. Why do women have prominent breasts even when not lactating? (Barash, in preparation). And finally, I would like to be kinder and gentler with Lloyd's book because – given the realities of reciprocal altruism-the more books I write, the more am I inclined to say good things about the efforts of others, hoping perhaps that they will return the favor … or at least, not be terribly nasty about my next offering! But I need to be honest, too. The topic is straightforward enough: why do women experience orgasm? The male counterpart is easy enough for evolutionists to explain, but – despite an abundance of theorizing – no one has yet demonstrated a clear-cut fitness benefit that accrues to orgasm in women. Indeed, for many years, biologists including yours truly believed that female orgasm was unique to human beings, albeit no less a mystery. Now, we know that females of many nonhuman primates and maybe even some nonprimates experience orgasm. But we still don't know why. One possibility, championed most prominently by Donald Symons (1979), is that the female orgasm is an evolutionary by-product of male orgasm, a neutral tag-along trait that persists because it is adaptive in one sex, and, because of its developmental underpinnings, is difficult to lose in the other. The preferred metaphor is/are male nipples: clearly adaptive in women, nipples are nonfunctional and evidently nonadaptive in men, yet they presumably persist among the latter because